An Interrupted Marriage (Silhouette Special Edition) (19 page)

“You know,” she said, stirring restlessly under his feathery, persistent touch.

He smiled again, and his hand rested on her ribcage while one finger drew a lazy, tantalising circle around the aroused tip of her breast.

“You know!”
she said again, clenching her teeth against the rising tide of sensation that threatened to engulf her.

His smile taunted. He brought his face closer to hers and whispered, “What? What do you need now, my lovely?”

Her hands reached for him, her fingers in his hair, tugging. “I need...your hands,” she said, almost against her will. “I need your mouth....” And he allowed her to guide his head down to where she wanted it, and as his mouth closed over her flesh she let out a sighing breath. “I need
you,
Magnus.”

A
t dawn Jade woke, and lay listening to Magnus breathing beside her. She watched his oblivious face as the light grew gradually brighter, filtering through the curtains. His hair was tousled in sleep, his eyelashes resting against his cheek with deceptive innocence. Wrenching her eyes away, she stirred gently, careful not to disturb him, and eased herself out of the bed, groping for the creased satin robe that at some stage in the night he had hurled carelessly to the floor, and belting it around her before making quietly for the bathroom.

When Magnus woke she was standing by the window, watching the sunrise colour the sea with a faint gold glow, the sky change from a washed-out grey to a fragile shade of blue.

She heard the faint rustle of the covers, and saw his hand slide over the empty side of the bed before he opened his eyes and sat up, leaning on one elbow.

“Jade? What are you doing? Come back to bed.”

She took a steadying breath and said, “No...not yet.”

Magnus sat up further, one hand raking his hair back. “No?” He smiled and thrust back the covers. “Then I’ll come to you.”

In three strides he had reached her, making to take her into his arms.

Jade stepped back, evading his touch. “Will you put some clothes on, please?”

He glanced down at his blatant nudity and slanted a disbelieving grin in her direction. “I was hoping I wouldn’t need to, yet.”

“Please, Magnus.” She wouldn’t look at him, turning her face away.

After a moment he went back to the bed, picking up his discarded underpants and trousers. “Okay,” he drawled as he buckled his belt. “I’m decent.”

She looked at him and then away, fiddling with the belt of her robe. He frowned and came back to her side. “What’s the matter, Jade? I thought last night—”

“I know what you thought!” She still wasn’t looking at him.

There was a short, fraught silence before he said, “It wasn’t exactly rape, you know.”

“I’m not accusing you, Magnus.”

“It was good for you, wasn’t it? Or were you faking? And if so, why?”

Jade took another deep breath and met his eyes at last. “I wasn’t faking. But sex can’t solve everything.”

Slowly, he said, “I’m not suggesting that it could. It does help, though. What exactly is the problem?”

“The problem is, you think I’ve been unfaithful to you.”

“We’ve been through all that!” he said. “I have no intention of raking it up again.”

“You mean you’ve forgiven me.” There was irony in her tone, but he didn’t seem to hear it.

“If it’s important for you to hear the words, yes. I forgive you.”

Jade shook her head in rejection. “That’s what I can’t accept,” she said. “That you still believe it happened.”

“Jade, whether it happened or not, it doesn’t
matter!
“

“It matters to me!” she said fiercely. “It matters quite a lot to me.” Last night had only confirmed that.

He took her shoulders in a firm grip. “Look at me.”

Jade raised her eyes, staring into his sombre, intent gaze.

“I love you,” he said. “No matter what you’ve done or haven’t done. As far as I’m concerned that’s the only important thing. I was hurt and jealous and angry, and no doubt I’ve let that show sometimes, but I swear it’s
over.
Maybe I had to work through it, and I know I was rough on you at times. But believe me, I never deliberately set out to punish you. Jade—I’ve waited long enough for you to come home, and I’m bloody thankful that you’re here. I don’t have any
right
to cavil about—the other.”

She ought to accept that and be glad of his generosity, yet she found it wasn’t possible. “But you won’t forget, will you? Things will never be the same between us.”

“If we work at it—”

Jade shook her head, pulling away from him. “I can’t, Magnus. I can’t just go on as though nothing has happened. If last night was an indication of how things are going to be—”

“You said last night was good!”

“I said I wasn’t faking,” she reminded him.

“And that it doesn’t solve everything,” he added impatiently. “I realise that. So what’s the problem?”

“The problem is, there’s been a shift in our relationship. You are the magnanimous, forgiving husband—I’m the erring wife. It isn’t a partnership of equals any more. And I don’t think I can stomach sex on those terms.”

Magnus made a small, jerky movement with his head, his eyes narrowing to slits. “Just what are you saying?”

“I’m saying that I feel shamed. Not by an act—or acts—of adultery that I don’t remember and can’t believe really happened, but by the way you made love to me last night.”

“You had no complaints at the time!” Magnus said coldly.

“Physically,” Jade conceded, “it was everything you thought it was. But emotionally I felt you’d...humiliated me.”

“Not by intention!” Magnus denied.

“Perhaps not,” Jade said, “but...as long as you believe what you do about me, that’s the way you’re going to make
me
feel.”

Magnus frowned. “Don’t you think you’re being a bit oversensitive?”

“If I am, I’m sorry. But it doesn’t alter my feelings.”

“All right. So let’s see if you still feel the same next time.” He reached for her and drew her towards him again.

She held back, resisting. “I don’t think that’s the answer.”

“Can you come up with a better one?” His arm fastened around her waist. “Well?”

Her hands were against his bare chest, his warm skin. “Magnus, wait!”

“What for?” he enquired. “We can talk about this forever and a day. The only way you’re going to know if these feelings of yours are a temporary aberration or a permanent condition is to make love again. One thing is sure. If you brood over it long enough the permanent condition is likely to become a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

He could be right. She stopped pushing at his chest and allowed him to lift her face to his, to find her mouth in a kiss that tipped her head back against the curve of his arm, while his other arm imprisoned her so closely that she couldn’t be unaware that he was already fully aroused.

His lips left hers and wandered hotly down the curve of her throat, to the hollow of her breasts. She felt his hand tug at the belt of her gown. “Come back to bed,” he muttered, and lifted her in his arms, taking her to it and laying her down on the sheets. His eyes glittered over her as he stood shucking off his pants, and then he was lying beside her, one hand caressing her through the slippery satin, while his mouth trailed fire across her skin.

At first she lay quiescent, resentment at his high-handed solution warring with the stirring of her senses under his determined erotic assault. He knew her all too well, she thought as her body moved of its own volition under the deft, intimate touch, and her breathing altered its tempo. Cleverly, he sensitised every nerve under her skin, until the merest brush of his fingers across her breast made her shudder with pleasurable anticipation.

When he moved from his position at her side to poise himself over her, she opened glazed eyes and looked at him beseechingly. “Magnus—please...say you believe me.”

His eyes were dark gems, on fire with wanting. “I believe you,” he said huskily. And he parted her thighs and placed himself between them.

Her own eyes closed as her body opened to him. “I love you, Magnus....” she whispered urgently against his roughened cheek. “Only you,
ever!
“

And then his mouth surged against hers, drowning words, drowning thought, leaving only a warm, rushing cascade of sensation.

* * *

It seemed ages later that the heavy warmth of him shifted, leaving her suddenly cold, and a hand drifted softly over her thigh. “All right?” he asked her, his voice scarcely louder than a whisper.

“Yes.” Jade lay with her eyes closed, unmoving. Tiny prickles of remembered pleasure still feathered her skin. There was a faint dampness on her temples and between her breasts.

She felt his breath on her lips, and then he kissed her very gently and lingeringly, as though setting a seal on something. The sheet rustled as he drew it up over her, covering her nakedness.

“Sleep in if you like,” he said. “I have to go down.”

She didn’t answer. After a moment the bathroom door closed behind him and she heard the thud and hiss of the shower. She lay very still, breathing evenly.

He’d said he believed her. Said it in the heat of passion, when she’d demanded it from him as the price of...what? Her submission? Whatever—he had said it.

And she knew he had lied.

* * *

There was no point in brooding on it, Magnus was right about that. He had promised not to raise the subject again, and she ought to be grateful for that. After all—she made herself review the evidence—no one in their right mind would believe she was innocent.

No one in their right mind...

Jade shivered. Perhaps she hadn’t been in her right mind, when...if...anything had happened at all. That might explain the diary, the accident that Magnus believed was no accident. And its long aftermath.

For the first time she made herself consider the possibility that Magnus was right, that her own instinctive rejection of his conclusions was a mere defensive mechanism, a childish denial of wrongdoing.
Oh, come on, Jade!
Lida had said.
What was anyone to think?

What, indeed, but what they did think—both Lida and Magnus. And, she realised, past conversations, innuendos, taking on new significance, so did his mother and Danella. And heaven knew how many others.

Even if she hadn’t been physically unfaithful, there seemed no doubt that she’d been meeting another man secretly, behind her husband’s back, that she’d confided to him the most intimate details of her life, that she’d become emotionally, if not physically dependent on him, and had been thrown into a state of desperation and despair when the relationship came to an end.

And there was no way she could prove otherwise, even to herself. She’d been warned that although she might randomly remember things she’d temporarily lost from her consciousness, there was a chance that parts of her memory would never be restored. It was something she’d been prepared to live with.

And so was this. Who Patrick was, exactly what part he had played in her life, she would probably never know.

* * *

In the following days she did her best to live in the present. Most mornings she spent some time helping Magnus in his office, gradually establishing a routine. Sometimes she looked up from what she was doing to find him staring at her silently, but when she caught his eyes he would look away and return to his paperwork.

After lunch she would sometimes go down to the beach, to walk or swim or just sit on the rocks watching the water. Once she borrowed the car and went for a drive, trying to renew her knowledge of the district. She found that many things were still familiar to her—the rolling landscape of grassy paddocks populated by the woolly white blobs that were sheep, or by brown-and-white beef cattle; the irregular patches of ragged bush, the narrow streams racing along stony beds between banks of fern.

On the way home she slowed for a couple of youngsters on horseback nearing the gateway of the Mediterranean-style whitewashed house that she’d been told belonged to the Beazleys.

Despite her caution, one of the horses took exception to the car and danced suddenly across the road in front of it, tossing its head as the rider attempted with only partial success to control it.

Seeing the flying hooves coming close to the grille, Jade hit the brake hard and swung the wheel, so that the car slewed sideways and one wheel descended with a jarring thud into the shallow ditch at the side of the road.

The horse had come to a standstill, its hooves planted four-square in the middle of the road, the rider scolding it in a disgusted, girlish voice. The other rider swung over to come to a halt beside the driver’s door, and a young, anxious face framed by long blond hair peered in at Jade. “Are you all right?” the girl enquired nervously.

Jade’s hands were tightly clamped to the wheel, her temples throbbing and clammy. But she wasn’t injured. “Yes.” She unbuckled her safety belt and pushed open the door. The other girl, so similar in looks that they must be sisters, had dismounted and was leading her reluctant mount to join them. “I’m awfully sorry,” she said breathlessly. “I don’t know what’s the matter with him.”

“He’s a pig!” the first girl said witheringly. “He gets spooked at the stupidest things.” As Jade warily climbed out and stood on the rough grass verge, the girl backed her horse and said, “I’ll get Dad. He can probably pull you out with the tractor. I hope the car isn’t damaged.”

She cantered up the drive to the house, and her sister said politely, “Would you like to come inside? You look a bit pale.” She said hesitantly, “You’re Mrs. Riordan, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” Jade said. “Madeline?” she added as something clicked into place. “And your sister—is that Yvette?”

The girl smiled. “Yes. We’d heard you were home. We wanted to come and say hello, but Mum and Dad said you needed a chance to settle in first. Do come up to the house. Mum will be pleased to see you.”

“You’ve both grown,” Jade told her. They’d been about nine and ten when Andrew and their brother had sometimes allowed the two girls to tag along on sufferance.

Yvette came back with her father, who shook hands as though genuinely pleased to see Jade, and walked around the car, inspecting it. “I’ll get it out,” he said, “but there could be a bit of damage to the suspension.”

In the end Jade yielded to their invitation to go inside, and was warmly welcomed by a woman she vaguely remembered, made to sit down and given tea and muffins.

After a while the farmer returned, kicking off his boots at the back door. “Don’t think you’d better drive it,” he said. “Steering looks a bit rocky. I’ll ring Magnus and ask him what he wants to do. Unless you want to?” he queried Jade.

Jade shook her head, reluctant to confess to Magnus that she’d damaged the car, and taking the coward’s way out.

In the event, she wished she had made the call herself. She heard Mr. Beazley say, “Magnus—afraid your wife’s had a bit of an accident—” and a sharp sound from the other end of the line, clearly audible before Mr. Beazley said hastily, “Just by our place. She’s okay—sitting here drinking tea with Glenda and the girls. Do you want—” There was another short burst of sound, and he broke off and put down the phone, looking faintly mystified. “He’s on his way.”